"Elspeth's is an awful place," she affirmed solemnly.
"Yes."
"And Zora?"
"She is not there much now, she stays away."
"But if she escapes, why not you?"
"She wants to escape."
"And you?"
"I don't want to."
This stubborn depravity was so distressing that Sarah Smith was at an
utter loss what to say or do.
"I can do nothing--" she began.
"For me," the woman quickly replied; "I don't ask anything; but for the
child,--she isn't to blame."
The older woman wavered.
"Won't you try?" pleaded the younger.
"Yes--I'll try, I'll try; I am trying all the time, but there are more
things than my weak strength can do. Good-bye."
Miss Smith stood a long time in the doorway, watching the fading figure
and vaguely trying to remember what it was that she had started to do,
when the sharp staccato step of a mule drew her attention to a rider who
stopped at the gate. It was her neighbor, Tolliver--a gaunt,
yellow-faced white man, ragged, rough, and unkempt; one of the poor
whites who had struggled up and failed. He spent no courtesy on the
"nigger" teacher, but sat in his saddle and called her to the gate, and
she went.
"Say," he roughly opened up, "I've got to sell some land and them damn
Cresswells are after it. You can have it for five thousand dollars if
you git the cash in a week.
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